An honest report but slightly negative.
Yes, I am among the lucky ones who shifted to remote work. I’ll still bitch about it.
More sleep.
My morning commuting time is now my sleeping time. Which is a good thing if you have a look at my regenerated skin.
Easier slacking.
Yes, why are you looking surprised? It is a fact: if circumstances allow, and given that there are times when my stakeholders/team/manager/CEO/maybe God don’t have 100% visibility what I’m doing, I might as well go for a nap.
More meetings, actually.
Uh-huh. We had to make sure these special circumstances are not getting in the middle. So what did we do? Added a few extra meet-ups in order to make up for the lost catch-ups, exchanges, and clarifications normally happening on campus and perhaps unplanned. The legendary this-meeting-could-have-been-an-email realisation became obsolete in a very strange manner and a very short amount of time. Instead of naturally turning to asynchronous communication, we just turned to more virtual meetings.
Conference calls fatigue.
Observing peers in windows is just draining. I get six faces in one screen and don’t know where to focus. I don’t even need to turn my head anymore, I only look straight and end up correcting my own face half (or all?) of the time. I believe some teams even experimented with being constantly connected via day-long video. You get what I’m saying: they kept the video call on for hours just to feel “together”.
I still don’t have a verdict for this, just a question: do I honestly look like this in real life?
Blurry boundaries, in general.
Do we really need to be on video during every call? Does my manager really need to see my paintings on the wall? Does my colleague really need to text me way past working hours? Do I really need to use my personal laptop for this? Do I really need to see my team mate’s cat licking himself? Do we really need to hear people’s spouses screaming in the background?
No fresh air.
There was a time when I used to consider it refreshing to have a few meetings per day. Crazy, right? I had to move around, change rooms, see another part of the building, bump into a tanned colleague back from South France. Generally, I would get my fresh air – or any air for that matter – during my commute, lunch break or any other change of environment. Now I simply go from the guest room/office to the kitchen/also office to prepare some pasta and eat it in the balcony just to get that stimulus.
Back pain.
This one already started during the first home office days when I used to spend considerably more time in positions suitable for watching cheap YouTube but certainly not for working. On my defense, I was expecting this to end soon. When it kept going, I figured I really needed to sit straight. Things got better. I still haven’t invested in a proper office chair, though. Probably expecting that it will end soon this time.
No work fun.
I don’t necessarily support the idea of drinking your way through success. Also, befriending – truly – every single person at the office is not realistic. However, I do enjoy the occasional inside jokes with the desk next door, some after work entertainment, the office parties, even a certain degree of hard core beer pong.
Sadly, I’m realizing I’ve been slowly distancing myself from all the social aspects of having a job: both from such opportunities, which seem rearer anyway, and from anyone at work who is not classified as an actual “friend”. Basically, no random fun anymore. Hm.
Apartment fatigue.
Same old complaint: no change of scenery. Why?
No spectacular changes in productivity.
My humble observation: working from home has been …working more than fine when it comes to individual tasks or focus time. But moving to heavily collaborative projects becomes increasingly challenging due to extra effort needed on all fronts. On average, I wouldn’t dare say my productivity has gone up, although it hasn’t sunk either – I still have to deliver, stupid.
Image via Bare Tree Media on GIPHY.
I walk fast. 